In June 1946 the Labour Party conference in Bournemouth marked a victory for the right-wing leaders. Ted Grant recognised this fact in an article in the Socialist Appeal. This was subsequently criticised by DO, a member of the RCP Minority, who claimed that the whole Labour Party was moving to the left. This was Ted’s reply.

The 1946 Labour Party conference saw the domination of the right-wing leadership and the disintegration of the former left. At this important turning point, Ted Grant explained the objective and subjective reasons for this and why the masses felt they had to “wait and see” what the Labour leaders would achieve in office.

In 1972 Britain was in a stormy period of class struggle. The Tory government’s attacks had radicalised the working class and the youth. This was reflected in the election of left leaders in the T&GWU, AUEW and other unions. It was also reflected in the Labour Party (LP) conference where the Tribune lefts gained a resounding victory. The growth of the Marxists within the LP and Labour Party Young Socialists was also a vindication of the patient work within the mass organisations of the working class undertaken by the Militant tendency. This document, although written 37 years ago, contains many valuable lessons for the Marxists of today.

The world communist conference of June 1969 marked an acceleration of the nationalist and reformist degeneration of the Stalinist parties worldwide. Open discussion on the differences between so-called “socialist” states was turned into diplomatic silence. Ted Grant provided a Marxist explanation for these developments.

This 1968 perspectives document was a fundamental document that prepared the British Marxists for the stormy period that lay ahead. “The Labour government has faithfully, if clumsily and stupidly, carried out the dictates of the capitalist class—much more effectively than a Conservative government could have done under the same conditions”, commented Ted Grant, but the victory of the Tories in the imminent election would unleash the anger and frustration of the workers and youth and push the trade unions decisively to the left.

The first year of the Wilson Labour government was one of timid attempts to fulfil the electoral promises of reforms which, however were being wrecked by the sharp reaction of the capitalists. Wilson would soon abandon any further attempt to carry out reforms, buckling under the pressure of the capitalists, paving the way for the disastrous defeat of Labour in 1970. Ted Grant in this pamphlet destroyed the phoney justifications of the Labour leaders for their cowardly policies and reaffirmed the need for socialist policies. The content of this pamphlet is as relevant, if not more relevant, today than when it was first written.

In 1965 the capitalist class in Britain, happy with the largest increases in profits ever seen, voiced their concerns about the policies proposed by the Labour government through the reactionary outing of Sir Halford Reddish. Ted Grant exposed these criticisms, explaining that they were a way of justifying the theft of the surplus value produced by the workers and concluded: “Big business is moaning about ‘socialism’. Give them a real taste of socialist measures, so that they can have something genuine to moan about!”

In May 1979 the print workers at The Times forced management to pull back from introducing a plan to enforce a new type-setting system. Ted Grant highlighted the fact that this victory would not have been possible without the solidarity shown by the print workers internationally to their British brothers.

In this article published in Militant in February 1979, a few months before Margaret Thatcher’s victory in the General Election, Ted Grant highlighted the root causes of the decline of British capitalism and the need for British capitalists to strike a blow to the workers’ rights and conditions. He exposed the failure of the reformist policies of the right-wing Labour leaders who in the three years of the Social Contract gave the capitalists a bonanza of profits while not guaranteeing any improvement for the workers. The hysterical campaign by the capitalist media against the unionised workers was an indication of the big class battles to come.

In the “transition” from the Franco dictatorship to bourgeois parliamentary democracy there was huge potential for genuine social change, for a revolutionary movement towards socialism. The leaders of the Communist Party, however, did not see their role as leading such a movement. On the contrary, they highlighted the “democratic” nature of ex-fascists and promoted reformist illusions.

In March 1977 Indira Gandhi called elections after a period of governing through “emergency” measures, which included the brutal clampdown on the labour movement. Her gamble didn’t pay off. The main beneficiary of the elections were right-wing forces gathered around the so-called Janata party. On the left the Communist Party of India, having supported Indira Gandhi’s measures, failed to gain from the situation, and the Maoist CPI-M shamefully backed Janata.

The capitalist crisis of the 1970s, combined with the Labour Party being in government after 1974 and carrying out austerity measures, had the effect of pushing the ranks of the party to the left. In these conditions the ideas of the Marxist wing, gathered around the Militant began to get a wide echo. The Marxists dominated the LPYS, the party youth wing, but were also winning many positions within the party, such as Andy Bevan’s selections as the party’s national youth officer. This provoked the wrath of the bourgeois media.

In 1978 war broke out between Vietnam and Cambodia, two countries that were supposed to be “socialist”. This bemused – and embarrassed – the Stalinist Communist parties, who could not explain this phenomenon. Ted Grant explained that the two regimes involved in war were bureaucratic, deformed workers’ state, with a one party, military-police dictatorship in power. Marxists supported the nationalised, planned economies in these countries, but raised the need for genuine workers’ democracy.

In 1979 Thatcher began to implement a long series of anti-working class policies on behalf of the British ruling class in an attempt to counter the decline of British capitalism. But, as Ted Grant pointed out, senile British capitalism was seeking to achieve higher profits through speculation and financial deals, rather than from investing capital to develop industry as it had done in the past. As he explained, “The bourgeoisie has forgotten completely that the production of real wealth is the production of manufacturing industry. They are more interested in the chase after nominal gains, rather than genuine gains for the economy itself.”

The 1972 Labour Party conference marked a turning point in the British labour movement. The high tide of radicalisation and class struggle that mounted up during the summer was finally reflected in the LP, pushing through a sound victory for the Tribune lefts at the party conference. Ted Grant drew the lessons of these developments—a powerful vaccine for the revolutionary vanguard against sectarianism—and pointed out that it was about time to launch a campaign in the whole of the labour movement to compel the Parliamentary Labour Party to abide to conference decisions.